Forum:Restoring anonymous editing
Yesterday, anonymous editing was disabled on wikis thought to target a young audience, in order to comply with the update to COPPA, which went live yesterday and forbids collecting of IP addresses, among other things, from those under 13 without parental consent. (For full details, see the blog post here) Now, for a wiki like the FiM Wiki, I totally get that, since the what it covers is obviously intended for the younger crowd. However, this wiki's anonymous editing is disabled, but I don't think it should have been, as unlike the FiM Wiki, a lot of what this wiki covers is definitely not for kids (or at least, not skewed towards them). I mean, I really don't think Friendship is Betrayal or Cupcakes, for example, are all that child friendly. Besides, with responsible parents, while it's likely that they'd be ok with frequenting the FiM Wiki and keeping up with the show, I doubt they'd let their kids get into the fanbase, reducing the need to look up stuff about it; I dunno about you, but Equestria Daily seems to skew more towards the adult crowd, even if most of the content on it is acceptable for all ages. Therefore, I think this wiki should have anonymous editing re-enabled, as it caters more to the older brony fanbase, rather than the children (in addition to the bronies) like the FiM Wiki. Please, if you disagree with anonymous editing having been disabled (as I do) leave arguments as to why you feel the wiki doesn't cater to (and attract) a younger audience, like the FiM Wiki; I feel it would be best to have as many replies as possible before I send this to Wikia through .-- 08:04, July 3, 2013 (UTC) : While it's unavoidable that children will find their way here, it should be fairly clear that we don't cater to them, but to the fanbase as a whole, which is mostly 13+. The number of mature content pages alone should be proof of that. I'm not all that big a fan of anonymous commenting, but it shouldn't have been turned off without notifying us before it happened. --Tulipclaymore (talk) 00:43, July 7, 2013 (UTC) ::As Jonny's stated, for anonymous commenting on the official FiM Wiki to be disabled is understandable, but for a Wiki such as this, such measures seem pretty pointless considering what it covers. And I'd imagine a number of anonymous users -- underage or otherwise -- were surprised to find that they were unable to comment without an account so suddenly. As far as this Wiki is concerned, I'm all for reinstating anonymous commenting. As long as there are responsible parents monitoring what their children are doing on the computer, I see no real harm in it. 04:22, July 26, 2013 (UTC) :::As a quick addendum, I can attest that a number of existing Wiki's do still allow anonymous commenting because (perhaps among other reasons) the content they cover is intended for people 13 and older. This might sound like a case for "they have X; why can't we have X?", but I can see there are exceptions being made. 04:27, July 26, 2013 (UTC) :::::Thank you all for having this disucssion. While I can see that this wiki itself has taken something ostensibly "for kids" (although with a definite adult fanbase as well) and put a more mature spin on it, I don't think there's any way to get around the base. I know that MLP and the various fandom offshoots do have a siginficant percentage of fans over 13, but we can't really escape the fact that the source subject is rated Y7 and airs on a child-directed network. In considering whether we need to make the change we have to assess based on the possibility that it might attract underaged users, and with My Little Pony in particular it's hard to argue otherwise, even if this particular wiki treats the subject in a more grown-up way. I'm sorry, but I can't remove the flag for this wiki. Best, --semanticdrifter (help forum | blog) 13:39, July 29, 2013 (UTC)